Thursday, 17 April 2014

Not even a whimsy of atmospheric movement, nary a droplet of
skywater for days, oodles of lack of cold and Dawn's crack is getting wider
every day at the Castle this morn.

I have been doing lots of stuff-putting dahn laminate
flooring, laying carpets, clearing out cupboards, sorting out the spare room,
mowing the moss and spending quite a lot of time getting some vitamin D from
the free solar heater.

Bought a nice lounger/recliner/rocking chair for poor old
Angus and it is so comfortable I keep falling asleep whist enjoying the "fresh
air".

I persuaded the butler to put some coal in the laptop's
boiler and have had a look at the interweb thingy for the first time in more
than a couple of weeks, not much seems to have changed, the hoo-ha in the bit
up from the Crimea is still dragging on, the search for the elusive flight over
the Indian ocean is still under way, and Dave (knob head) Cameron has it seems
completely lost it and has found some sort of holy spirit thingy which he wants
to impose on all of us.

In a bid to stop hospitals murdering patients The National
Institute for Health and Care Excellence has issued "quality standards"
on measures including hand-washing and catheter insertion.

Allegedly about 300,000
patients develop an infection in England each year while being treated by the
NHS.

Prof Gillian Leng,
of NICE, said it was unacceptable that rates were still so high.

Rates of MRSA and Clostridium
difficile - the most well-known hospital-acquired infections - have fallen
significantly in recent years, but one in 16 people treated in the NHS picks up
an infection.

According to Prof
Leng: "Infections are a costly and avoidable burden. They hinder a
patient's recovery, can make underlying conditions worse, and reduce quality of
life."

The NICE standards
say people should be prescribed antibiotics in accordance with guidelines and
healthcare workers should follow procedures - including hand-washing - to cut
the risk of infection when devices such as catheters are inserted.

Prof Leng added:
"Although there have been major improvements within the NHS in infection
control, particularly in relation to Clostridium difficile and MRSA bloodstream
infections in the last few years, healthcare-associated infections are still a
very real threat to patients, their families and carers and staff.

Four new species
of carnivorous sponges that prey on shrimplike amphipods and other small animals were discovered in deep
waters off the Pacific coast of North America, scientists announced.

These nasty little
buggers lack the specialized
cells called choanocytes, which have tiny, beating tails that help pull in
bacteria and single-celled organisms from the surrounding waters. Instead,
they've developed a different strategy to snare food they trap larger, more
nutrient-dense organisms, like crustaceans, using beautiful and intricate
microscopic hooks."

Within a few
hours, a carnivorous sponge will start digesting the prey in its clutches.
Eventually, all that's left is an empty shell.

Lundsten and
colleagues discovered four meat-eating sponges with the help of underwater
remote-operated vehicles (ROVs) that video-recorded the sponges and plucked
samples from the seafloor with a robotic arm.

According to a
study published in the latest Journal of Dental Research, a new tissue
regeneration technique may allow people to simply re-grow a new set of pearly
whites.

Dr. Jeremy Mao,
the Edward V. Zegarelli Professor of Dental Medicine at Columbia University
Medical Center, has unveiled a growth factor-infused, three-dimensional
scaffold with the potential to regenerate an anatomically correct tooth in just
nine weeks from implantation. By using a procedure developed in the
university’s Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory, Dr. Mao
can direct the body’s own stem cells toward the scaffold, which is made of
natural materials. Once the stem cells have colonized the scaffold, a tooth can
grow in the socket and then merge with the surrounding tissue.

Dr. Mao’s
technique not only eliminates the need to grow teeth in a Petri dish, but it is
the first to achieve regeneration of anatomically correct teeth by using the
body’s own resources. Factor in the faster recovery time and the comparatively
natural process of regrowth (as opposed to implantation), and you have a
massively appealing dental treatment.

Columbia
University has already filed patent applications in regard to the technology
and is seeking associates to aid in its commercialization. In the meantime, Dr.
Mao is considering the best approach for applying his technique to
cost-effective clinical therapies.

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